By: Tony Monahan and Lampeto Efthymiou
Introduction
In recent years, higher education institutions have recognized the need for students to be capable of understanding of and engaging in diverse settings. Employers have also increasingly sought candidates with intercultural skills and experience. To address this need, many colleges and universities have increased offerings of study abroad programs for their students, including an array of short-term programs. The QCC Center for International Affairs, Immigration and Study Abroad has been conducting short-term study abroad programs since 2005. To assist students in these experiences, a study abroad preparation program was developed through the collaboration of QCC faculty and staff.
Among the many benefits to study abroad are: increased understanding of cultural values, increased interaction with culturally diverse peers, understanding multiple perspectives on subjects and issues, personal growth and maturity, and increased academic involvement and volunteer work after the overseas experience.
Pandemic Break of Study Abroad:
In March, 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak not only locked down colleges and universities in the U.S., it also disrupted study abroad experiences for over thousands of U.S. students overseas. After the initial lockdown many study abroad programs were canceled or partially canceled. Currently, study abroad programs have been slow to recover as COVID variants still persist and many global travel restrictions are still in place. However, since the need for global education still exists, the Global Leaders Program (GLP) was developed as an eLearning platform for QCC students.
Program Description:
Currently, there is no global citizenship course being offered at the College. The GLP has been designed as an interdisciplinary course for students interested in careers involving international relations, leadership, human rights, globalization, and/or other topics of global concern. The GLP strongly supports critical thinking, intellectual inquiry, global awareness, civic responsibility, and artistic expression which is part of the QCC mission. The GLP will allow students to:
- Identify key elements of a global issue and analyze that issue from multiple perspectives
- Recognize the diversity of cultures, subcultures, and social systems in their local and global communities
- Apply varying approaches, values or ethical principles to respond to a global question, dilemma, or problem, and describe alternative outcomes
- Reflect upon the relationship between one or more communities to demonstrate an understanding of global interdependence
- Reflect upon how one’s position/grounding relate to intercultural communication and shape perception of complex global issues
Program Modality:
The GLP curriculum balances Problem-Based and Inquiry-Based Learning. The GLP will be administered through Blackboard and will include the following modules: 1) Empathy, 2) Intercultural Communication, 3) Active listening, and 4) Global Citizenship. Sessions include structured multi-media presentations of relevant material augmented with guest speakers, reading assignments, video assignments, and individual and group work activities. Students also write journal reflections on what they have learned from the program, how it affected their development in global competencies and interpersonal skills and how it may have changed their perspectives about culture and diversity. All activities will involve a combination of skills learning and building through critical thinking, problem-solving, writing, and public speaking.
Program Themes
The program will feature four interconnected themes:
- Empathy - increased development of the ability to perceive and share the thoughts and emotions of another
- Intercultural communication -improved ability to communicate with people from different backgrounds and understanding of issues from multiple perspectives
- Active and Generative Listening – increased ability to receive, understand, remember, evaluate, and respond to speaker messages
- Global Citizenship – enhanced understanding of the importance of cultures and the inherent dignity and well-being of every person.
Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework of the GLP will demonstrate the process of transforming a student’s individual empathy to one that is socially empathic through educational training. The training begins with the fundamentals of intercultural communication and collaborative learning which facilitate the development of intrapersonal and interpersonal attributes necessary for building empathy.
Curricular Objectives
- Students will gain understanding of current and emerging global issues.
- Students will review, discuss and present historical, contemporary and emerging issues of global concern.
- Students will demonstrate responsibility for planning, presenting, and evaluating individual and group presentations.
- Students will integrate class readings, lectures, and discussions, and personal observation in order to address global issues from multiple perspectives.
Program Activities
- Students will attend and participate in all organized small group topical conversational sessions.
- Students will collaborate in small groups to review selected course reading materials and present an overview of the reading, its main points, and its implication to global citizenship.
- Students will review global issues, choose an agreed-upon topic, research, discuss, prepare, and present the topic to the GLP group.
- Students will write a reflection on their participation in the GLP and how that participation may affect their professional goals going forward.
Participant Assessment
Each session will require students to complete reading and viewing assignments, actively participate in instructional sessions, collaborate with peers in group-based discussions and presentations, and submit personal journal reflections to the material. Faculty provide feedback on all completed assignments and reflections. Success in the program is based on the completion of all assignments and reflections. Upon completion, students will receive a Global Citizenship Certificate from the Center of International Affairs, Immigration, and Study Abroad.
The GLP is scheduled to be launched for the fall 2022 semester through the Center for International Affairs, Immigration, and Study Abroad with Lampeto Efthymiou, (Student Life International Student Manger) and Dr. Tony Monahan (Associate Professor, HPED). For further information, please contact: lefthymiou@qcc.cuny.edu or amonahan@qcc.cuny.edu
